I've had an idea for a game based on viking mythology for a long time now. Think the 9 worlds of viking legend, you go to Hell when you die and have to bargain your way out to go retrieve your corpse (full loot), while 'heroes' get taken to Valhalla by valkyries and have their bodies protected (gear can't be stolen). It'd have to be skill based, single shard, with no preset player factions (only NPC factions like EVE). Everything would be craftable, though you would have world bosses that you could kill for materials, abilities, etc.
On another note, 50 mil is more than enough to make a decent MMO. Let's do a bit of budgeting, shall we? Even better, we'll bump up a lot of the costs so we get a conservative estimate that is even more expensive than what one is likely to expect.
1. Engine: first thing's first, the engine needs to be tried and true, robust, flexible, stable, etc. Let's go really over the top and say we spend 5 mil on our engine. That's 10% of our development costs, and probably far more than you'd reasonably expect to pay for a dated engine. Even if that's not the case, there are good, reliable engines that can be obtained for a fraction of this price, but we'll take this as our budget anyway.
2. Backend: this is the actual meat of the MMO. The other stuff is just there to make it look pretty. There are plenty of options, but let's say that we budget $50,000 for the networking tech alone. We'll spend another $100,000 on the actual server farm required to run our game.
3. Team: We'll go with 20 people, say. 5 modellers, 3 concept artists, 5 programmers working with the engine, 4 world builders, and 3 sound engineers. Let's say they all get paid $100,000 per annum, so 2 mil per year. We don't need to build an engine, so most of our time is spent creating the world, getting a login and patching system up and running, and then integrating game logic.
4. Office: let's budget 5 mil per year for a small apartment or office that we can work out of. Realistically, we could buy an expensive apartment or even a house and work from there, and that would be a one time cost. However, let's just say that we want to rent, because we also like burning cash. And it costs us 5 million a year.
5. Development stations: let's say it costs us $5,000 per development PC, and we need 15 of them minimum. Fuck it, let's buy 20 in case some of them don't work. That's another $100,000
6. Advertising: here's a radical thought; rather than holding huge press-releases that are all piss and wind, we take the Blizzard approach. We shut our mouths and keep everything greater than top secret, until we're ready to start beta testing. Then, we unleash our website using viral marketing, put some videos up on youtube, and wait. As soon as something awful, reddit and digg get their hands on the media, knowledge of our game has gone global anyway. Let's say this still costs us $5 mil.
7. Launch: let's hold 5 million aside to compensate for launch day catastrophes.
Okay, all up we have:
$10,250,000 on engine, server tech, development hardware, and launch day holdings. These are static; they are one time costs.
$2,000,000 per annum on staff.
$5,000,000 per annum on facilities.
$5,000,000 in advertising once we're ready to start testing.
After all of this, we've spent $15,250,000 on one time purchases, leaving $34,750,000 left of our budget. Of that, we pay $7,000,000 a year in salaries and overhead. Even so, that would still give us a development cycle of nearly 5 years on a game for which we already have an engine and backend for. Even assuming it takes us a year to get up with all the documentation and learn how to use those tools to the best of our ability, that's still 4 years of good art, coding, modelling and world-building. And that's with vastly overblown budgets for everything. In fact, you could do it for muuuuuuch cheaper. The reason most modern MMOs are so expensive is because they all fell for the IP gimmick. They spend shitloads licensing existing IPs, and then pursue ass-backwards logic by having full game voice-acting, shitty themepark leveling concepts, and poorly implemented gameplay.
I mean, sure, $50 mil is nowhere near enough if you've got celebrity programmers in your squad, an expensive license, and you're advertising every other day. For most mere mortals though, it's more than enough. Not every movie costs $100 mil (in fact, some don't even cost $1 mil), and not every game needs to be a triple-A graphic orgasm to be successful. If anything, I believe that the MMO industry rewards thrift rather than extravagance.
I've had an idea for a game based on viking mythology for a long time now. Think the 9 worlds of viking legend, you go to Hell when you die and have to bargain your way out to go retrieve your corpse (full loot), while 'heroes' get taken to Valhalla by valkyries and have their bodies protected (gear can't be stolen). It'd have to be skill based, single shard, with no preset player factions (only NPC factions like EVE). Everything would be craftable, though you would have world bosses that you could kill for materials, abilities, etc.
On another note, 50 mil is more than enough to make a decent MMO. Let's do a bit of budgeting, shall we? Even better, we'll bump up a lot of the costs so we get a conservative estimate that is even more expensive than what one is likely to expect.
1. Engine: first thing's first, the engine needs to be tried and true, robust, flexible, stable, etc. Let's go really over the top and say we spend 5 mil on our engine. That's 10% of our development costs, and probably far more than you'd reasonably expect to pay for a dated engine. Even if that's not the case, there are good, reliable engines that can be obtained for a fraction of this price, but we'll take this as our budget anyway.
2. Backend: this is the actual meat of the MMO. The other stuff is just there to make it look pretty. There are plenty of options, but let's say that we budget $50,000 for the networking tech alone. We'll spend another $100,000 on the actual server farm required to run our game.
3. Team: We'll go with 20 people, say. 5 modellers, 3 concept artists, 5 programmers working with the engine, 4 world builders, and 3 sound engineers. Let's say they all get paid $100,000 per annum, so 2 mil per year. We don't need to build an engine, so most of our time is spent creating the world, getting a login and patching system up and running, and then integrating game logic.
4. Office: let's budget 5 mil per year for a small apartment or office that we can work out of. Realistically, we could buy an expensive apartment or even a house and work from there, and that would be a one time cost. However, let's just say that we want to rent, because we also like burning cash. And it costs us 5 million a year.
5. Development stations: let's say it costs us $5,000 per development PC, and we need 15 of them minimum. Fuck it, let's buy 20 in case some of them don't work. That's another $100,000
6. Advertising: here's a radical thought; rather than holding huge press-releases that are all piss and wind, we take the Blizzard approach. We shut our mouths and keep everything greater than top secret, until we're ready to start beta testing. Then, we unleash our website using viral marketing, put some videos up on youtube, and wait. As soon as something awful, reddit and digg get their hands on the media, knowledge of our game has gone global anyway. Let's say this still costs us $5 mil.
7. Launch: let's hold 5 million aside to compensate for launch day catastrophes.
Okay, all up we have:
$10,250,000 on engine, server tech, development hardware, and launch day holdings. These are static; they are one time costs.
$2,000,000 per annum on staff.
$5,000,000 per annum on facilities.
$5,000,000 in advertising once we're ready to start testing.
After all of this, we've spent $15,250,000 on one time purchases, leaving $34,750,000 left of our budget. Of that, we pay $7,000,000 a year in salaries and overhead. Even so, that would still give us a development cycle of nearly 5 years on a game for which we already have an engine and backend for. Even assuming it takes us a year to get up with all the documentation and learn how to use those tools to the best of our ability, that's still 4 years of good art, coding, modelling and world-building. And that's with vastly overblown budgets for everything. In fact, you could do it for muuuuuuch cheaper. The reason most modern MMOs are so expensive is because they all fell for the IP gimmick. They spend shitloads licensing existing IPs, and then pursue ass-backwards logic by having full game voice-acting, shitty themepark leveling concepts, and poorly implemented gameplay.
I mean, sure, $50 mil is nowhere near enough if you've got celebrity programmers in your squad, an expensive license, and you're advertising every other day. For most mere mortals though, it's more than enough. Not every movie costs $100 mil (in fact, some don't even cost $1 mil), and not every game needs to be a triple-A graphic orgasm to be successful. If anything, I believe that the MMO industry rewards thrift rather than extravagance.
Ever play Vindictus? It's based off of Celtic mythology (I'm not sure how much, but I know that Vindictus is a pre-game to Mabinogi, story-wise, and that for sure is Celtic-based), is a graphic and gameplay orgasm, and there is quite the lack of content in the shops, forcing you to make your own armour by killing a certain dramatic fox like 5 times for his skin and his hat. Also, it's pretty brand new, like October 15th open beta new, so everyone's a noob, not just yourself. Also, gameplay is pretty intense, and it can only be described as Soul Calibur Online with teams through dungeons, with a hint of WWE throwing and object-weaponization. It's pretty fun
I have several idea’s for an MMO, some of these aren’t MMORPG’s so I hope you don’t mind. With $50 million I could make one of these games, or several. These are just brief outlines of the game.
1. Dinoland/World of Dino’s/Laurisia: It would be about Dinosaur like humanoids living in a world. The world would be based off the caveman, Native American, ancient world cultures. Classes/skills would be based off those times. The community would be small clan based then giant faction based, though giant factions may exist, but you don’t have to join them. It would be a great game for people who like exploring, discovering and crafting, people that absolutely hate those things wouldn’t like the game. There isn’t a force of great evil trying to take over the world, like most mmo’s, though there are bad guys. It would have some Tomb Raider like aspects to it.
2. Tankland: It would be about a great nation with a wacko ideology: “To prevent all out War and terror, you must not promote peace, you must not prevent people from showing their anger. Humans are by nature an angry people, hiding their anger, builds it up for more tragic out comings. A good leader will provide many means for people to show their anger, without tragic results.” The story will be about the positives and negatives of the ideology and the way the nation decided to answer the ideology. Other then the basic story, the story is more sandboxy. The tanks people use is a skill based, slot based system, and they can create fortresses, towns, a home, etc… Pve is of moderate importance. PVP would be very important in the game. In-game factions, and player made factions exist, but you aren’t complete enemies as you are part of the same overall nation, there are factions because of ways to answer the ideology.
3. Open World: This would be my true sandbox game. It would take place in the large time period between the Renaissance, and the Industrial revolution. It wouldn’t be historically “accurate” in that these time periods can mix together, but you don’t have cell phones, magic, and other crazy stuff like that. When you start the game you can start in 3 different types of areas: A city-which will have the most handholding for people that are interested in sandbox games, but this would be the first. There will also be the wilderness, where there is no handholding for people that like that, and a town type for an in-between feel. You can learn any skill at any time you want, but learning in an order will be faster. Like the real world, you can learn dividing factions first, but it would be easier to learn addition, subtraction, and basic division first. You will be able to build towns from scratch. NPC’s will exist to cause action, especially when the game just starts, but can be “defeated” and never be seen again.
7. Stuffies vs. Monsters: This would be a true Themepark game. When I think of going to a theme park, I think, there is so much things to do, what to do first? Unlike modern themepark games where I have to go on the teacup ride before going on the faster ride, before going on the rollercoaster, in these game you can just go on the roller coaster. There is some linearness though. Like stuffies start in a factory and monsters start in a witch’s cottage. There would be different activities in the morning, afternoon and night (game time, not real time), because of the human interaction, at night most humans are asleep, so that is when stuffies and monsters reign. The character creation would be based off Spore, but with a couple more rules. It is sort of a platformer (Mario, spyro, crash bandicoot) mmo, where most npc’s don’t die by just getting there health low, but certain abilities kill them, and certain abilities they are immune to. There would be a lot of puzzles, and like a platformer, movement (ex: jumping), actual matters. There’s a lot more stuff, but it would get to long.
I have other ideas, but I just don’t feel like typing about them all, so I just wrote about the themes that the genre doesn’t seem to have any, or much of.
I wonder how many people on here are actually interested, or in the process of making a MMO?
I was thinking about this thread last night and then remembering the days of old. Back when people were making muds from tools that were available at the time and also the days of nwn and doom mods. There were those neighbors who had a game company who would invite me to their weekend lan parties. Those were the days.
My thoughts are to put the money into creating the best open source free to use mmo toolkit so that people can create their own games and can share the work they did with others.
As a ex-DAoC gamer I'd say that a three-factions-system is needed.
Doesn't have to be Briton/Viking/Celt, though a DAoC at release with just updated graphics and some of the later things like housing and such (not necessarily implemented like DAoC did).
The setting could easily been Carthage/Rome/Greece, or England/France/Iroquois during French-Indian War. A Vampire/Werewolf/Human setting similar to the original Underworld movie could be intersting. The key is to have three factions which identifies themselves as the heroes, rather than defined as good or evil.
Ultima Online in 3D, the more possibility you give to the player , the better it is. And doing a game that change it's Shape every week with events that modify the world etc...
I would undoubtedly create an actually 'good' successor to Ragnarok Online, not like the run of the mill MMO that gravity is making now. 3D models and environments in that classic top down view, WASD movement, a less hardcore leveling experience, no gear grind yet a great loot fest, you'd be able to join WoE from the get go, auction houses, more classes, guild halls that grew as the guild progressed, snappy fast paced combat, customizable skills, skill point and stat point reset for the cheap, flexible character skill progression... I could go on and on.
I'm deeply disappointed by Gravity's recent renovation of their game. Shame, really...
Not sure if anyone has said yet, but I would do SHADOWBANE 2!!!
SB's crafting, city-building, items wearing out, sieges, player shaped world, ffa pvp and customization need to be implemented with today's technologies and then tweaked a bit with more modern mmo philosophies. Most awesomest evah!!
Those are all SF games, but otherwise they are quite different.
First one is a shooter, second one is a trade game with pvp, third one is star wars with, for a MMORPG, rather extreme focus on story.
Just imagine the current EvE, but with Human Avatar ( yes like the upcoming Incarna ) also a 3rd person shooter views for Land PvP and PvE content, so you can actually walk in Stations, your ships, then mix them with the Officer recruitment ala STO, so recruitment for your ship etc..
and you can land on Planets seamlessly, then exit your ship, and Each of the Planet like the SW:TOR Planets, with quests and explorations, and all of that non Instanced, all that in 1 massive unreasonably huge gigantic Solar system as big as Infinity: Quest for Earth
and all of that player run economic
im not even sure if 50 millions could ever do such a game
If the objective was to make money, then I would hands down make a 4E DnD MMORPG, if done right would make as much money as that other game we shall never mention
Otherwise I would make a Shadowrun MMORPG, which could also be a popular and financial success
Good take on the millions of "what IP should be an MMO" threads.
Shadowrun Online!
To me it just seems like a crime that no one has done this, there can not possibly be a better setup for an MMO.
Even if you have never heard of Shadowrun I bet this would satisfy a lot of people.
Sci-Fi, yet elfs and all that crap, gritty dark world were you are not really the hero but just trying to survive, at all cost.
Magic and tech combined, and not in a bad way.
More lore then one could possibly ever need.
If WoW made a trilliom by hitting the least common demonitor ( sp ? ), then this is one step even further, the world applies to fantasy and sci-fi crowd alike, not the really hard core of crowd though, but business wise that is a small enough crowd to not bother.
Only killer would be that it would really need to be crazy sandbox, equal to EVE or beyond.
But I really think this would bring the themepark crowd into the "make your own adventure" crowd.
As we speak I am playing shadowrun on my android phone with the snesoid emulator, and it is still better then most games released in the last 10 years.
The PnP RPG is even more awesome, for those of us who still do that.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would make a fantasy game where you have the option of being a dragon. Intiiallly you would be weak and vulnerable. The process to growth would be slow and risky, but as you hit the higher levels you would become the most powerful creature in the land.
The other classes would be classic fantasy based (humans, elves, etc). ones with warring factions, castle seiges and PvP. Factions could create temporary truces to defend against dragon invasions (at high levels dragons can fly, breath fire, ice, acid, etc and ransack castles to capture their spoils).
Castle and dungeon building as well as crafting would all be worthwhile and play a vital role in the survival of any class.
I'm not sure that 50 mil would be enough (actually...I'm QUITE sure it wouldn't be), but.....if I had all the cash I needed to do it, what I would do is buy the IP for Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines and turn that into an amazing MMO that would make WoD cry. And I wouldn't do it unless I knew I could do a better job than CCP and have a rich, massive, explorable world, the most bleeding edge graphics, etc. I would throw a ton of money into advertising once the game was as close to sheer MMO perfection as possible.
Instead of trying to hump another brand name i'd just make a new mmo....open world pvp, deeply involved crafting and resource system, complex social and territory system that allows guilds to control areas of land and forge alliances with other guilds for defence or conquest of other guild/alliance territory, onus on playing and exploring instead of levelling and a skill based system.
I'll just quote this guy because it's exactly what I would make.
I'm not sure that 50 mil would be enough (actually...I'm QUITE sure it wouldn't be), but.....if I had all the cash I needed to do it, what I would do is buy the IP for Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines and turn that into an amazing MMO that would make WoD cry. And I wouldn't do it unless I knew I could do a better job than CCP and have a rich, massive, explorable world, the most bleeding edge graphics, etc. I would throw a ton of money into advertising once the game was as close to sheer MMO perfection as possible.
Hey....a girl can dream, right?
Create a corporation, enlist in on the stock exchange and when you start needing cash, sell shares and you can easily make a 150 million + MMO while retaining 50% of the shareholder equity.
Hybrid Themepark/Sandbox MMO -2 Region Controlled Servers 1st Server (U.S and South America-Europe-Africa-Austrailia) 2nd Server (Asia, Japan, Middle East, Koreas) 2nd Server I proposed to keep RMT and gold spamming and purchasing in game limited to the East.
Solo-Friendly
Group Friendly (Incentives for Grouping XP, Yield Better Drop Rates and Loot)
Time Skill Based System (ex. EVE Online) or Regular Skill Based with no Cap
In-Depth Crafting (ex.SWG) and Resource Gathering , Expermination, Resource Quality, Ground and Space Resources Everything is Craftable From Starships Ranging From A Fighter Craft Up To A Guild Controlled Capital Ship Fully Customizable, Clothes, Food, Weapons, Equipment, Armor, Furniture, Houses and Structures. Skinning.
Quests (Dyanmic Questing and Random Hidden Npcs To Recieve Rare Quests, Plus Regular Ol Static Quests)
Sidekicking- Enabling Players to Help Out Noobs in Already Completed Quests
Diplomacy and Reputation with NPC races and NPCs
Player Housing (Non-Instanced) Limitations would be set housing is only allowed on Capital Planets housing will not be allowed on quest or mission based planets to address lag and latency issues, also a remove housing feature which would be policed by players to remove abandoned housing after 3 months of account inactivity to address ghost towns and abandoned structures or a simple server reset that checks in the database of players inactive past 3 months and removes structures.
Housing would be similar to SWG's with fully customizable options and the ability to decorate, also would like to add the option to create own housing structures from scratch for those that like to dabble in creating new things.
Space Station (Guild Player Housing) For those who rather brave the depths of space than live life on the ground these (Guild) housings would be completely buildable and customizable to suit a guilds needs. (Military Themed Starbase, Trading Post, Pirate, etc)
Open Universe and Open World PVP-Consensual and FFA PVP) Here's the thing I would address with the problem people Have With FFA PVP, a good example is EVE set up the universe in terrorities set up for FFA PVP play and other terrorities you would enter disable FFA PVP to strike a balance and address griefing in safe ground and space, however if you choose to take on FFA PVP terrorities and the Guilds that inhabit them great risk and great reward will be a objective here, extremely rare spawns but spawn in great quantiy out in lawless space along with hidden mission NPCs on planets and stations, extremely dangerous NPCs will reside out here yielding great rewards as well.
Raiding (Ground Only)
4 Factions
Full On 3D Space Combat (a Mix of X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter, Freelancer, and X-3) Fully Customizable Ship Interiors
Space will be a optional asset to the game Missions will be either space or ground focused neither will cross into each others domain.
Polish
Future Expansions- Non Combat Professions and Jobs, Minigames (Fishing, Gambling, Enteraining, Music,) More Skills, Balancing and Bug Fixes, More Ground Raids, Possible Planetary Defenses for FFA Terrorities, Atmospheric Flight, Military Bases, Labs, Basically things that would make the ultimate MMO, input from community would be helpful to keep both sandbox and themepark players happy.
An MMO based off the Wheel of Time saga, by Robert Jordan. Given the detail of that world and culture laid out by the late Robert Jordan, I think it would be a great way to break the mold of the traditional MMO and its holy trinity of classes (tank, healer, dps). It could also include a system like diplomacy, from Vanguard, due to the amount of politics and "game of houses" described in the books. I know a company picked up the rights to an MMO shortly after Jordans death but I am not sure what, if anything, has been done since. It really could make for an incredible game as long as developers like Turbine or Cryptic (My 2 shining examples of developers who failed, on an epic proportion, to deliver when they had an awesome IP to start from) stay far far away.
$50 Million would be a good start, but I would love to pump even more into a longer development cycle, to make sure the IP is given its due diligence.
You ever play on the wheel of time server in neverwinter nights? If so, you should definitely hit me up.
Comments
I've had an idea for a game based on viking mythology for a long time now. Think the 9 worlds of viking legend, you go to Hell when you die and have to bargain your way out to go retrieve your corpse (full loot), while 'heroes' get taken to Valhalla by valkyries and have their bodies protected (gear can't be stolen). It'd have to be skill based, single shard, with no preset player factions (only NPC factions like EVE). Everything would be craftable, though you would have world bosses that you could kill for materials, abilities, etc.
On another note, 50 mil is more than enough to make a decent MMO. Let's do a bit of budgeting, shall we? Even better, we'll bump up a lot of the costs so we get a conservative estimate that is even more expensive than what one is likely to expect.
1. Engine: first thing's first, the engine needs to be tried and true, robust, flexible, stable, etc. Let's go really over the top and say we spend 5 mil on our engine. That's 10% of our development costs, and probably far more than you'd reasonably expect to pay for a dated engine. Even if that's not the case, there are good, reliable engines that can be obtained for a fraction of this price, but we'll take this as our budget anyway.
2. Backend: this is the actual meat of the MMO. The other stuff is just there to make it look pretty. There are plenty of options, but let's say that we budget $50,000 for the networking tech alone. We'll spend another $100,000 on the actual server farm required to run our game.
3. Team: We'll go with 20 people, say. 5 modellers, 3 concept artists, 5 programmers working with the engine, 4 world builders, and 3 sound engineers. Let's say they all get paid $100,000 per annum, so 2 mil per year. We don't need to build an engine, so most of our time is spent creating the world, getting a login and patching system up and running, and then integrating game logic.
4. Office: let's budget 5 mil per year for a small apartment or office that we can work out of. Realistically, we could buy an expensive apartment or even a house and work from there, and that would be a one time cost. However, let's just say that we want to rent, because we also like burning cash. And it costs us 5 million a year.
5. Development stations: let's say it costs us $5,000 per development PC, and we need 15 of them minimum. Fuck it, let's buy 20 in case some of them don't work. That's another $100,000
6. Advertising: here's a radical thought; rather than holding huge press-releases that are all piss and wind, we take the Blizzard approach. We shut our mouths and keep everything greater than top secret, until we're ready to start beta testing. Then, we unleash our website using viral marketing, put some videos up on youtube, and wait. As soon as something awful, reddit and digg get their hands on the media, knowledge of our game has gone global anyway. Let's say this still costs us $5 mil.
7. Launch: let's hold 5 million aside to compensate for launch day catastrophes.
Okay, all up we have:
$10,250,000 on engine, server tech, development hardware, and launch day holdings. These are static; they are one time costs.
$2,000,000 per annum on staff.
$5,000,000 per annum on facilities.
$5,000,000 in advertising once we're ready to start testing.
After all of this, we've spent $15,250,000 on one time purchases, leaving $34,750,000 left of our budget. Of that, we pay $7,000,000 a year in salaries and overhead. Even so, that would still give us a development cycle of nearly 5 years on a game for which we already have an engine and backend for. Even assuming it takes us a year to get up with all the documentation and learn how to use those tools to the best of our ability, that's still 4 years of good art, coding, modelling and world-building. And that's with vastly overblown budgets for everything. In fact, you could do it for muuuuuuch cheaper. The reason most modern MMOs are so expensive is because they all fell for the IP gimmick. They spend shitloads licensing existing IPs, and then pursue ass-backwards logic by having full game voice-acting, shitty themepark leveling concepts, and poorly implemented gameplay.
I mean, sure, $50 mil is nowhere near enough if you've got celebrity programmers in your squad, an expensive license, and you're advertising every other day. For most mere mortals though, it's more than enough. Not every movie costs $100 mil (in fact, some don't even cost $1 mil), and not every game needs to be a triple-A graphic orgasm to be successful. If anything, I believe that the MMO industry rewards thrift rather than extravagance.
Ever play Vindictus? It's based off of Celtic mythology (I'm not sure how much, but I know that Vindictus is a pre-game to Mabinogi, story-wise, and that for sure is Celtic-based), is a graphic and gameplay orgasm, and there is quite the lack of content in the shops, forcing you to make your own armour by killing a certain dramatic fox like 5 times for his skin and his hat. Also, it's pretty brand new, like October 15th open beta new, so everyone's a noob, not just yourself. Also, gameplay is pretty intense, and it can only be described as Soul Calibur Online with teams through dungeons, with a hint of WWE throwing and object-weaponization. It's pretty fun
Fo Shao
If someone handed me 50 million dollars?
I would make a mess in my pants.
And thennnnnnnnn?
Fo Shao
I have several idea’s for an MMO, some of these aren’t MMORPG’s so I hope you don’t mind. With $50 million I could make one of these games, or several. These are just brief outlines of the game.
1. Dinoland/World of Dino’s/Laurisia: It would be about Dinosaur like humanoids living in a world. The world would be based off the caveman, Native American, ancient world cultures. Classes/skills would be based off those times. The community would be small clan based then giant faction based, though giant factions may exist, but you don’t have to join them. It would be a great game for people who like exploring, discovering and crafting, people that absolutely hate those things wouldn’t like the game. There isn’t a force of great evil trying to take over the world, like most mmo’s, though there are bad guys. It would have some Tomb Raider like aspects to it.
2. Tankland: It would be about a great nation with a wacko ideology: “To prevent all out War and terror, you must not promote peace, you must not prevent people from showing their anger. Humans are by nature an angry people, hiding their anger, builds it up for more tragic out comings. A good leader will provide many means for people to show their anger, without tragic results.” The story will be about the positives and negatives of the ideology and the way the nation decided to answer the ideology. Other then the basic story, the story is more sandboxy. The tanks people use is a skill based, slot based system, and they can create fortresses, towns, a home, etc… Pve is of moderate importance. PVP would be very important in the game. In-game factions, and player made factions exist, but you aren’t complete enemies as you are part of the same overall nation, there are factions because of ways to answer the ideology.
3. Open World: This would be my true sandbox game. It would take place in the large time period between the Renaissance, and the Industrial revolution. It wouldn’t be historically “accurate” in that these time periods can mix together, but you don’t have cell phones, magic, and other crazy stuff like that. When you start the game you can start in 3 different types of areas: A city-which will have the most handholding for people that are interested in sandbox games, but this would be the first. There will also be the wilderness, where there is no handholding for people that like that, and a town type for an in-between feel. You can learn any skill at any time you want, but learning in an order will be faster. Like the real world, you can learn dividing factions first, but it would be easier to learn addition, subtraction, and basic division first. You will be able to build towns from scratch. NPC’s will exist to cause action, especially when the game just starts, but can be “defeated” and never be seen again.
7. Stuffies vs. Monsters: This would be a true Themepark game. When I think of going to a theme park, I think, there is so much things to do, what to do first? Unlike modern themepark games where I have to go on the teacup ride before going on the faster ride, before going on the rollercoaster, in these game you can just go on the roller coaster. There is some linearness though. Like stuffies start in a factory and monsters start in a witch’s cottage. There would be different activities in the morning, afternoon and night (game time, not real time), because of the human interaction, at night most humans are asleep, so that is when stuffies and monsters reign. The character creation would be based off Spore, but with a couple more rules. It is sort of a platformer (Mario, spyro, crash bandicoot) mmo, where most npc’s don’t die by just getting there health low, but certain abilities kill them, and certain abilities they are immune to. There would be a lot of puzzles, and like a platformer, movement (ex: jumping), actual matters. There’s a lot more stuff, but it would get to long.
I have other ideas, but I just don’t feel like typing about them all, so I just wrote about the themes that the genre doesn’t seem to have any, or much of.
I wonder how many people on here are actually interested, or in the process of making a MMO?
-I want a Platformer MMO
I would make a Fantasy MMO set in a post-modern era.... I think that would be cool to be fully realized.
Ignorance may be Bliss, but Knowledge is Power
I was thinking about this thread last night and then remembering the days of old. Back when people were making muds from tools that were available at the time and also the days of nwn and doom mods. There were those neighbors who had a game company who would invite me to their weekend lan parties. Those were the days.
My thoughts are to put the money into creating the best open source free to use mmo toolkit so that people can create their own games and can share the work they did with others.
As a ex-DAoC gamer I'd say that a three-factions-system is needed.
Doesn't have to be Briton/Viking/Celt, though a DAoC at release with just updated graphics and some of the later things like housing and such (not necessarily implemented like DAoC did).
The setting could easily been Carthage/Rome/Greece, or England/France/Iroquois during French-Indian War. A Vampire/Werewolf/Human setting similar to the original Underworld movie could be intersting. The key is to have three factions which identifies themselves as the heroes, rather than defined as good or evil.
Ultima Online in 3D, the more possibility you give to the player , the better it is. And doing a game that change it's Shape every week with events that modify the world etc...
I'm deeply disappointed by Gravity's recent renovation of their game. Shame, really...
Awaiting GW2
Not sure if anyone has said yet, but I would do SHADOWBANE 2!!!
SB's crafting, city-building, items wearing out, sieges, player shaped world, ffa pvp and customization need to be implemented with today's technologies and then tweaked a bit with more modern mmo philosophies. Most awesomest evah!!
Just imagine the current EvE, but with Human Avatar ( yes like the upcoming Incarna ) also a 3rd person shooter views for Land PvP and PvE content, so you can actually walk in Stations, your ships, then mix them with the Officer recruitment ala STO, so recruitment for your ship etc..
and you can land on Planets seamlessly, then exit your ship, and Each of the Planet like the SW:TOR Planets, with quests and explorations, and all of that non Instanced, all that in 1 massive unreasonably huge gigantic Solar system as big as Infinity: Quest for Earth
and all of that player run economic
im not even sure if 50 millions could ever do such a game
So What Now?
I have quite a few possible ideas for what I would make in this situation, but let's try this one:
Fantasy MMO with a focus on RvR, where the factions are the Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse
Top MMOs: Asheron's Call, Shadowbane, EVE Online, Planetside
Played: Pretty much everything at one point or another
If the objective was to make money, then I would hands down make a 4E DnD MMORPG, if done right would make as much money as that other game we shall never mention
Otherwise I would make a Shadowrun MMORPG, which could also be a popular and financial success
Its easy... i would make Jedi Knights Online
With the same kind of combat than Jedi Knights with upgraded gfx and massive land
that would be amazing
Good take on the millions of "what IP should be an MMO" threads.
Shadowrun Online!
To me it just seems like a crime that no one has done this, there can not possibly be a better setup for an MMO.
Even if you have never heard of Shadowrun I bet this would satisfy a lot of people.
Sci-Fi, yet elfs and all that crap, gritty dark world were you are not really the hero but just trying to survive, at all cost.
Magic and tech combined, and not in a bad way.
More lore then one could possibly ever need.
If WoW made a trilliom by hitting the least common demonitor ( sp ? ), then this is one step even further, the world applies to fantasy and sci-fi crowd alike, not the really hard core of crowd though, but business wise that is a small enough crowd to not bother.
Only killer would be that it would really need to be crazy sandbox, equal to EVE or beyond.
But I really think this would bring the themepark crowd into the "make your own adventure" crowd.
As we speak I am playing shadowrun on my android phone with the snesoid emulator, and it is still better then most games released in the last 10 years.
The PnP RPG is even more awesome, for those of us who still do that.
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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Mount and Blade Online.
I would make a fantasy game where you have the option of being a dragon. Intiiallly you would be weak and vulnerable. The process to growth would be slow and risky, but as you hit the higher levels you would become the most powerful creature in the land.
The other classes would be classic fantasy based (humans, elves, etc). ones with warring factions, castle seiges and PvP. Factions could create temporary truces to defend against dragon invasions (at high levels dragons can fly, breath fire, ice, acid, etc and ransack castles to capture their spoils).
Castle and dungeon building as well as crafting would all be worthwhile and play a vital role in the survival of any class.
A Castlevania MMO with a modified version of SoTN's engine.
I'm not sure that 50 mil would be enough (actually...I'm QUITE sure it wouldn't be), but.....if I had all the cash I needed to do it, what I would do is buy the IP for Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines and turn that into an amazing MMO that would make WoD cry. And I wouldn't do it unless I knew I could do a better job than CCP and have a rich, massive, explorable world, the most bleeding edge graphics, etc. I would throw a ton of money into advertising once the game was as close to sheer MMO perfection as possible.
Hey....a girl can dream, right?
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
An mmorpg with an overhead view like Lineage or Warcraft 3.
Something where you have multiple characters in a party. I think there's a lot of interesting things you could do with lore and factions.
An mmorpg that uses something like Kinect would be fun as well....at least for awhile lol.
I'll just quote this guy because it's exactly what I would make.
Create a corporation, enlist in on the stock exchange and when you start needing cash, sell shares and you can easily make a 150 million + MMO while retaining 50% of the shareholder equity.
Pretty much this.. and hirer Raph Koster to it
You ever play on the wheel of time server in neverwinter nights? If so, you should definitely hit me up.